Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art

Distributed for Amsterdam University Press

Paper $43.50ISBN: 9789089644718
Published
August 2013
For sale only in the United States, its dependencies, the Philippines, and Canada

Once at the margins of the art world, film now occupies a prominent place in museums and galleries. Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art explores the emergence of cinema as a primary medium of artistic production, offering an in-depth inquiry into its genesis, its defining features, and its ramifications. Erika Balsom also tackles cinema studies’ great disciplinary obsession—namely, what cinema was, is, and will become in a digital future. Rich in theoretical reflections and critical analyses, Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art offers insights into the whole history of cinema from the vantage point of today’s art.

“This book is one I have been hoping to encounter for quite a while. It is rich in theoretical reflections as well as critical analyses of works, and makes a very strong case for a new form of art and a new form of cinema in one. It is theoretically complex and elegantly written.”

D.N. Rodowick | Harvard University

"Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art is our first sustained critical history of one of the most important dimensions of contemporary art: the encounter of the cinema with the museum, the art gallery, and new practices of moving image installation. It is also a deep examination of the persistence of a certain memory of cinema that persists as a subject of critical re-examination by the most fascinating artists of our time. It is a path-breaking book that will long remain unsurpassable."

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction – The Othered Cinema

Chapter 1: Architectures of Exhibition

The “Passages” of Cinema

Projection and Patrimony

Black Box/White Cube

The New Blockbusters

The Myth of Activity

Media at MoMA

Chapter 2: Filmic Ruins

Post-medium Post-mortem

Indexing the Past

A Little History of 16mm

Ruinophilia

Analogue Aura

Chapter 3: The Remake: Old Movies, New Narratives

Ambivalent Appropriations

The Four Operations

Precursors

The False Promises of the “Utopia of Use”

Remaking Fandom

“Room-for-Play”

VCR Memories

Chapter 4: The Fiction of Truth and the Truth of Fiction

Anti-anti-illusionism

Hybrid Forms

Rehabilitating Narrative

A Return of the Deal

Two Images of Death

Conclusion – “Cinema and…”

Notes

Bibliography

Illustration Credits

Index

For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu